Cowboys, Broncos could be in mix if Vikings shop DE Jared Allen

Vikings star Jared Allen has 121.5 career sacks in his career. (USATSI)

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To this point, the one-win Minnesota Vikings have not pursued any deals for Jared Allen, according to league sources, and have not really entertained the prospect internally, but given the team’s woeful performance, Allen’s huge salary and his impending free agency, exploratory calls will come before the deadline.

Allen would be a perfect fit for Dallas, for instance, or to fortify Denver’s defense, but he is due about $8 million for the remainder of the season, and the Vikings would have to eat a substantial portion of that to move him given the Cowboys’ cap situation and the Broncos’ budgetary limitations. Allen, a fit really only for 4-3 teams, would have to be amenable to any trade, given some of the salary gymnastics that would likely be necessary, moving around some money, etc, and at this stage of his career and with free-agency impending, he’d likely be pretty selective about which contenders made sense for him.

However, given how poor the Vikings are, how unsettled they are at quarterback and how far they seem to be from contending, as much as Allen loves the franchise it’s hard to imagine him re-signing there as a free agent -- or the Vikings being in position to offer the kind of money it would take to sign him, given his age and all of their other needs. So, rival GMs believe the Vikings -- who could be in trouble this weekend against the streaking Packers -- would be naïve to at least not find out which teams could afford Allen, and what he could fetch them in terms of compensation above and beyond the compensatory pick they will get from him in 2015 once he departs as a free agent.